Sinkholes, Jesus & Impartiality (an email I sent to the Washington Times)

Dear Ms. Chumley,

I recently came across your article regarding a woman in Ohio whose car was swallowed by a sinkhole. Your opening sentence reads, "A woman whose car was swallowed by a sinkhole in Toledo said she kept calling on Jesus to save her — and he did." Dismayed, I kept reading to see if you were setting up a pun where one of the firefighters who saved her was named Jesus. This does not seem to be the case.

As a reporter, you have a duty to be as objective as you can (unless, of course, you are writing an opinion piece, which in this instance you were not). You may view your lead sentence as eyecatching, but I as a reader view it as heavy-handed. I understand you work for the Washington Times, but surely you realize that not only Christians read your newspaper. Surely you know that the United States is a patchwork quilt of different beliefs.

I am astounded that a newspaper of any repute would advance the notion not only that a particular deity exists but that he or she personally intervened in an happenstance. What you have baldly asserted is that Jesus performed a miracle in Toledo. I would like to see your sources as to that.

Sincerely,

the children of the poor (part 2), by Gwendolyn Brooks

the children of the poor (from "The Womanhood")
by Gwendolyn Brooks

2.

What shall I give my children? who are poor,
Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,
Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand
No velvet and not velvety velour;
But who have begged me for a brisk contour,
Crying that they are quasi, contraband
Because unfinished, graven by a hand
Less than angelic, admirable or sure.
My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device.
But I lack access to my proper stone.
And plenitude of plan shall not suffice
Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone
To ratify my little halves who bear
Across an autumn freezing everywhere.

(no subject)

U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement -- "Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home. [...]

"Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images." (NYT)

Listeria Outbreak: Crave Brothers Cheese Sold at Whole Foods, Kroger, Others -- "Crave Brothers cheese, which has been linked to a Listeria outbreak that has sickened at least five people in four states killing one of them, was sold at Whole Foods and Kroger stores nationwide and dozens of other regional grocery stores in: California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Some restaurants also served the cheese."